Back Aa

Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2> Warwick Castle. The great Castle of Warwick, now the seat of the Earl and Countess of Warwick, who formed themselves into a Limited Liability Company some fifteen years ago, under the title of the “Warwick Estates Co., Ltd.,” has been the seat of the Grevilles since 1605. The origin of Warwick Castle goes back to Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great and wife of the then Earl of Mercia, a strenuous and warlike lady, to whom are attributed many ancient works.  She is credited with building the first fortress in A.D. 915, on that knoll still known as “Ethelfleda’s Mount,” on which a Norman keep was subsequently erected, perhaps by that famous personage Turchil.  In the family of Turchil the cognisance of the yet more famous Bear and Ragged Staff originated, which in all succeeding generations has descended from house to house of the distinguished families who have come into possession of Warwick Castle: the Houses of Beauchamp, Neville, Dudley, Rich, and Greville: not as their personal badge, but as that of the castellan for the time being of Warwick.  A fantastic theory has been set afoot that, as Siward, son of Turchil, assumed the name “de Arden,” thus founding the numerous knightly family of Ardens, Shakespeare, as the son of a Mary Arden, was probably the rightful owner of Warwick Castle!  We may safely say that this never occurred to Shakespeare himself, and may add him to one of that numerous class slyly alluded to by Ingoldsby; people “kept out of their property by the rightful owners.” The great Guy of Warwick, a giant in stature and doughty in deeds, is a myth, but that does not prevent his armour being shown in the Great Hall of the Castle.  His period seems to be placed between that of Ethelfleda and Turchil, for the date of his death is put at A.D. 929.  Mythical though he is, the later and very real flesh-and-blood Beauchamps, who came into possession of Warwick in the thirteenth century, were often named “Guy” in allusion to him.  His armour, like his legendary self, is a weird accretion of time, and is no longer displayed with the touching belief of less exacting times.  The Age of Belief is dead, they say.  Of belief in some things incredible, no doubt.  He wore, according to the articles seen here, not only armour of tremendous size and weight, but of periods ranging from three hundred, to six hundred and ninety years after his death.  A bascinet of the time of Edward the Third covered his head, his breastplate, weighing fifty pounds, is of the latter part of the fifteenth century, and the backplate belongs to the Stuart period.  His shield weighs thirty pounds; his great ponderous sword, five feet six inches long, is of the time of Henry the Eighth.  “Guy’s breakfast cup, or porridge-pot” is equally wonderful, for it has a capacity of a hundred and twenty gallons.  It is really an ancient iron cauldron, once used for cooking the rations of the garrison. The first historical Earl of Warwick was Henry de Newburgh, who died 1123; and by a succession of changes and failures of heirs the title and estates came to William de Beauchamp, husband of the daughter of William Mauduit. In the time of Guy, Earl of Warwick, son of this William, the Castle witnessed some stirring scenes.  The discontented nobles, troubled at the preference given by Edward the Second to his foreign favourite, Piers Gaveston, and at the apparent impossibility of permanently ridding the kingdom of him, seized that pestilent foreigner and confined him for a short time in a dungeon here. The favourite was by no means an acceptable person to the English barons, who although all directly descended from William the Conqueror’s Frenchmen, had already been assimilated by this wonderful country of ours, and were as English as—well, let us say as English as any German Jew Goldstein or Schlesinger of modern times who, coming to these happy shores, suffers a sea-change into something rich and rare, and becomes a new and strange “Gordon,” or “Sinclair.”  They regarded this flippant Gascon from the south of France as an undesirable of the worst type, and could not and would not appreciate his jokes; a natural enough disability when you come to consider them, for they were all at their expense.  If you study the monumental effigies of those mediæval barons and knights which are so plentifully dispersed throughout our country churches, you will readily perceive that although they were frequently very magnificent personages, their countenances do not often show any trace of intellectual qualities.  Edward the Second was as flippant a person as his favourite, and when these stupid and indignant barons saw them laughing together, they knew very well, or keenly suspected, that they themselves were being laughed at.  Did not this Gaveston fellow call the Earl of Lancaster “the play-actor,” or “the fiddler,” and the Earl of Lincoln “burst belly.”  Every one knew he called his father-in-law “fils à puteyne,” or “whoreson.”  Guy, Earl of Warwick, was “the black hound of Arden.” p. 257“Let him call me hound: one day the hound will bite him,” said the Earl.  Meanwhile, Gaveston went on finding nicknames for every one, and made himself bitterly hated by those dull-minded barons who could not joke back at him.  The worst of it was, his lance was as keen, and went as straight to the point, as his gibes.  It was little use meeting him in single combat, for he unhorsed and vanquished the best. Hence this seizure of the hateful person.  The story of it is told by Adam Murimuth— <blockquote>“The King wished Peter de Gavestone to be conveyed to him by Lord Adamar de Valense, Earl of Pembroke, for safety; and, when they were at Danyntone next Bannebury, the same Earl sent him away in the night; and he went near to one place for this reason.  And on the morrow in the morning came Guy, Earl of Warwyk, with a low-born and shouting band, and awakened Peter and brought him to his Castle of Warwyk and, after deliberation with certain elders of the kingdom, and chiefly with Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, finally released him from prison to go where he would.  And when he had set out from the town of Warwyk even to the place called, somewhat prophetically, Gaveressich, he came there with many men making a clamor against him with their voices and horns, as against an enemy of the King and a lawful outlaw of the Kingdom, or an exile; and finally beheaded him as such xix day of the month of June.” </blockquote> So the “Black Dog” did indeed bite him to some effect.  This tragic spot is a place called Blacklow Hill, one mile north of the town.  A monument to this misguided humorist, following his natural propensities in a land where humour is not appreciated, was erected on the spot by a Mr. Greathead, of Guy’s Cliff House, in 1821.  The inscription itself has a complete lack of humour— <blockquote>p. 258“In the hollow of this rock was beheaded, on the first day of July, 1312, by barons as lawless as himself, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, the minion of a hateful king, in life and death a memorable instance of misrule.” </blockquote> With this fierce “Black Dog of Arden,” whose teeth were so sharp, the architectural history of the Castle becomes clear.  He repaired and strengthened it, after the rough handling it had received in the Barons’ War, in the reign of Henry the Third; but to Thomas de Beauchamp, his grandson, is due Cæsar’s Tower, about 1360, and it was his son Thomas, who built Guy’s Tower, named after the mythical giant, about 1394. It costs two shillings to see Warwick Castle.  I believe if you happen to be a resident of Warwick or Leamington, there is a reduction of fifty per cent.  The entrance is not so old as it looks, and was cut through the rock in 1800.  It leads to the gloomy Barbican, whose overhanging walls give a truly mediæval approach and form the completest contrast with the scene that opens beyond. The visitor enters a huge courtyard, now one vast lawn, nearly two acres in area; with the residential portion of the Castle and its state-rooms on the left.  Ahead is Ethelfleda’s Mount, and on the right, guarding the curtain-wall at intervals, are Guy’s Tower; the incomplete Bear Tower, with its mysterious tunnel, the work of Richard the Third; and the companion Clarence Tower, built by George, Duke of Clarence, his ill-fated brother, murdered in the Tower of London.  Beside Ethelfleda’s Mount is the Hill Tower. Immediately to the left of the entrance are the brew-house, laundry and then Cæsar’s Tower, with its gloomy dungeon, a most undesirable place of residence with vaulted stone roof and mouldy smells, meet for repentance and vain regrets.  Here the “Black Dog” imprisoned the flippant Gaveston, and many later generations of prisoners passed weary times, scratching their not very legible records upon the walls for lack of employment.  Among them is the record of one “Master John Smyth, gunner to the King,” who appears to have been a prisoner here for the worse part of four years, in the hands of the Cromwellian partisan, Lord Brooke.  We learn nothing further of the unfortunate gunner, nor why he was meted such hard measure. <blockquote>MafTER : IohN : SMyTH : GVNER : TO HIS : MAIESTyE . HIghNES : WAS : A PRISNER IN THIS PlACE : AND lAy HERE . frOM 1642 TELL th WILLIAM SIdIATE ROT This SAME ANd if My PEN HAd Bin BETER foR HIS SAKE I Wovld HAVE MENdEd EVERRi leTTER. Mafter               1642 345 Iohn : SMyTH GVNER to H . MAIEfTys : HighNES WAS A PRIfNER IN This PlACE IN : ThE .  yEARE of OVR L ord 1642 : 345          miserere          ihs mary          ihs mio </blockquote> Mr. William Sidiate (or possibly it is “Lidiate”) who thus, in the quaintest of lettering inscribed the sorrows of his friend the imprisoned gunner, appears to have been fully conscious of the eccentricity of his handiwork, but the inferiority of his “pen”—which was probably a rusty nail—can have had nothing to do with his weird admixture of “large caps,” “upper case,” “lower case” and italic type which I confidently expect will make the compositor of this page smile and sigh by turns. The Great Hall, with its armour and pictures and relics of Guy, is of course the chief feature of the long round of sight-seeing that makes Warwick Castle second to none as a show-place.  It was greatly injured in the fire of December 1871, when many priceless relics were destroyed.  Facsimile replicas of some have been made, and of the ancient armour which survived it has been said that there is no finer in the Kingdom, except that in the Tower of London.  It is remarkable that although the Castle has passed from family to family, and sometimes to families not related to their predecessors, the continuity of things has been maintained.  Here is the mace of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, “the Kingmaker,” who was slain in 1471 at the Battle of Barnet; here are portions of the armour which belonged to Prince Edward, murdered at Tewkesbury, after the battle; together with relics of the Dudleys, such as the miniature suit of armour made for the “noble Impe”; together with a helmet of the great Oliver Cromwell, and the suit worn by Lord Brooke, shot at the siege of Lichfield.  His buff leathern jerkin was burnt in 1871, and that we now see is a facsimile of it.  Here, too, are those preposterous relics of Guy, already mentioned, together with a rib of that Dun Cow of terrific story which he slew upon Dunsmore.  The visitor will see that rib with surprise, and note that the cows of a thousand years ago were larger than ever he suspected.  It is the rib of a whale. He would be a courtly, and perhaps also a tedious, writer who should essay to fully describe Warwick Castle, with its many suites of state-rooms, its gothic stone-vaulted servants’-hall, and its terraces, ponds, and gardens, together with the conservatories and that famous Roman antiquity, the so-called “Warwick Vase,” found at Hadrian’s Villa, near Rome in 1770, and purchased by the dilettante George, second Earl, from Sir William Hamilton.  Great improvements have been made here in the last few years at the cost of “a little damming and blasting,” as was remarked at the time. Past the melancholy flymen who linger in the broad roadway opposite the entrance to the Castle, and wear jaundiced looks as though it were years ago since they had had a fare and expect it to be years yet before they will get another, you turn to the right into Mill Lane, narrow street of ancient houses, leading down to the river and to the site of that ancient mill where the feudal lords had their corn ground. The magnificence of state-rooms, the lengthy parade of family portraits, the beauty of the gardens, and the trimness of well-kept lawns do not serve the really cultivated visitor’s turn in Warwick Castle.  He pays his two shillings and is herded through with many others, a little browbeaten by the stale declamation of the gorgeous lackeys and by a very indigestion of sightseeing.  It is not a medieval fortress he has seen, but a private residence.  In Mill Lane, however, you come into nearer touch with realities.  Here, in this by far the most picturesque and unspoiled part of Warwick, where the bowed and time-worn brick or timber-framed houses are living out their life naturally, something of the ancient contrast between subservient town and feudal fortress may be gathered, softened down, it is true, by the hand of time.  Cæsar’s Tower is viewed at its best from the lower end of the lane, and looks from this point of view the noblest and the sternest tower the forceful military architects of the Middle Ages have given us, and well worthy of the great name of Cæsar long ago conferred upon it by some unknown admirer of its dignity and massive beauty.  It was somewhere about 1360 when Cæsar’s Tower first arose upon the rocky bluff in which its foundations go deeply down.  It was then called the p. 262Poictiers Tower.  The purpose of this extremely strong and cunningly-planned work just here is lost to the modern casual observer, but if a keen glance is directed to the Avon flowing so closely by, it will be observed that although Mill Lane is now a lane butting up against the river bank and leading nowhere, the ruins of a very substantial stone bridge that once crossed the broad stream at this point are seen.  This formerly carried the high road from Warwick to Banbury, and when still in use brought the possibility of attack upon the Castle at this angle very near, and therefore to be provided against by the strongest possible defence.  Hence those boldest of machicolations overhead, those arrow-slits in the skilfully-planned battlements above them, and that extraordinary double base with the bold slopes, seen in the accompanying illustration; a base whose purpose was to fling off with a tremendous rebound into the midst of an enemy the stones, the molten lead and pitch, and the more nasty, but not so lethal missiles with which a besieged garrison defended themselves.  This base is quite solid rock, faced with masonry.  In the upper part of it is seen the small barred window that admits a feeble light into the dungeon already described.  To-day the elms have grown up to great heights beside Cæsar’s Tower and assuage the grimness of it, and the only sounds are the cawings and gobbling noises of the rooks in their branches, or the unlovely cries of the Castle peacocks which strut across the lane in all their glory of colour. The tower rises 106 feet above its rocky basement.  Those old military architects who designed and built it had not the least idea they were installing a picturesque feature.  They had no knowledge at all of the picturesque; but they assured themselves, as well as they could, that the safety of the Castle should be provided for.  And they did it so well that history will be studied in vain for a successful siege. <ANTIMG alt="Cæsar’s Tower, Warwick Castle" title= "Cæsar’s Tower, Warwick Castle" src="images/p263.jpg" /> This must have been a noble and imposing entrance to Warwick town in days of old.  Then the road from London to Banbury crossed the ancient bridge and came up under this frowning tower and through the south gate of the town, along Mill Lane. The bridge, originally a narrow packhorse bridge of thirteen arches and of great antiquity, was widened in 1375 and the number of arches reduced to seven; and, thus remodelled, carried the traffic until 1790.  This way came of necessity every traveller from London to Warwick, and in this manner Queen Elizabeth entered the town and Castle in 1572. Warwick Castle was in those times less secluded from the streets than it now is.  The feudal owners of it were not at all concerned to hide themselves away, but when the age of sight-seeing dawned and amateurs of the picturesque began to tour the country, they began to consider how they could ensure a complete privacy.  It was effected by diverting the public highway.  This was done at the instigation of George, second of the Greville Earls of Warwick, in or about 1790, when the new road and bridge were made, crossing the Avon considerably to the eastward.  From that modern bridge, which cost £4000, only in part contributed by the Earl, who benefited most by the diversion, is obtained that view of the Castle so extravagantly praised by Sir Walter Scott.  It is the only possible view, and not a good one: one by no means to be compared with that formerly obtained from the old bridge.  Sir Walter Scott therefore either did not know what he was talking about, or was too much of a courtier to reveal his own convictions. At this same time when the road was made to take its new course, the meadows on the other side of the Avon were enclosed and thrown into the park.  To complete and fully round off this story of obliterating ancient landmarks, the old bridge was wrecked in the same year by a flood.  Three only of its arches remain. The Grevilles, the present Earls of Warwick, have a motto to their coat of arms which is a complete change from the usual swashbuckling braggart sentiments.  He was surely a singularly modest man who first adopted it.  I wish I could identify him.  He must have read well the history of Warwick Castle and have pondered on the successive families of cuckoos who have nested in the old home of the original owners.  He selected a quotation from the Metamorphoses of that amorous dove, P. Ovidius Naso—O! quite a proper one, I assure you—Vix ea nostra voco, “I can scarce call these things our own.”  Whether he meant the heirlooms, the mace that belonged to the great Richard Neville “the Kingmaker,” the Plantagenet and the Dudley relics, or if he were a contemplative philosopher ruminating on the Law of Entail, by which he was not owner, to do with as he would, but only tenant-for-life, who shall say? <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.